From the 1880s through the 1940s, Japanese immigrants created a vibrant Japantown (Nihonmachi) in downtown Tacoma. Crammed into a few blocks stretching from 17th Street near Union Station north to 11t...
Tacoma's Salishan Housing Project rose in 1943 as part of the industrial miracle that won World War II for the Allies. After the war, the project served first veterans and military families, then low-...
Clarence Talbot, Seattle playwright and actor, and Guy Williams, state director of the Federal Theatre project, formed the Tacoma Playwrights' Unit of the Project in early 1936. The Federal Theatre Pr...
Tacoma's electrical and water utilities, its industrial railroad, and its telecommunications system all grew out of a need to serve the community coupled with frustration at the ability of private com...
During its years of operation between 1912 and 1922, the Tacoma Speedway, located in Lakewood, hosted some of the big names of racing, rivaling the best in the world. The Who's Who of races -- "Terrib...
The Tacoma Theatre, dubbed the "Finest Temple on the Coast" when it opened in 1890, was the vision of Tacoma boosters from as early as 1873, when Tacoma was selected as the western terminus of the Nor...
Sound Transit's mass transportation system has some of its roots in Tacoma's trolley systems of the 1890s. The Tacoma and Steilacoom Railway Company started in 1890. The company used steam engines to ...
Shack towns and homeless encampments – "Hoovervilles" – multiplied in Washington before and during the Great Depression. In Tacoma, an encampment near the city garbage dump cover...
Five years before June 15, 1916, when Boeing Airplane Model 1, also known as the Bluebill, flew for the first time, Takayuki Takasow (sometimes spelled Takasou) was the first person to build and ...
Dr. George Tanbara and Kimiko Fujimoto Tanbara of Tacoma were partners in social justice, public health, community service, and the resettlement of Japanese Americans in the Pierce County city followi...
Seattle's taxicab industry began in 1908 with a fleet of three Stearns Landaulets operated by the Seattle Taxicab Company. Competitors elbowed in, rate wars ensued in the 1920s, and Seattle Taxic...
It's a car! It's a plane! No, it's both! The Aerocar, a combination car and airplane, was designed by Northwest native Moulton "Molt" Taylor, a gifted inventor, innovative thinker, and enthusiastic pr...
Quintard Taylor Jr. is a University of Washington professor and historian who founded BlackPast.org, an online encyclopedia of African American history. Born in Tennessee to a family of sharecroppers...
William Taylor was the founder of North Bend, located in eastern King County on the Snoqualmie River where it turns north. He was a prime mover in this Snoqualmie Valley community. Taylor came to...
There have been about 75 teachers' strikes in the state of Washington since the first one, in Aberdeen, in 1972. The author of this People's History, Steve Kink, had a long career with the stateâ...
Tekoa is a farming community in the northeast corner of Whitman County, surrounded by the lush rolling fields of the Palouse, a geographic region encompassing southeast Washington and north central Id...
Almost Live! was a popular sketch comedy show that aired on Seattle’s NBC affiliate KING-TV from 1984 through 1999. Featuring local comics Ross Shafer and John Keister, the show poked fun a...
Temple de Hirsch, located in Seattle, was founded in 1899 on principles of reform Jewish thought. Today [2024] Temple de Hirsch Sinai is the largest Reform congregation in the Pacific Northwest and ce...
The community that would become Tenino, located in Thurston County, was founded in 1851 when Stephen Hodgden (1807-1882) filed a claim under the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850. In 1872 the Northern P...
Charles Carroll Terry and his older brother Leander (Lee) Terry left their homes in New York state in 1849, bound for California. By October 1851 they were in Oregon Territory, and both, at different ...
Sidney Thal was one of Seattle's most beloved personalities. In 1948, he and his wife Berta Thal (1911-1996) purchased Fox's Gem Shop in downtown Seattle and transformed it into a leading retailer of ...
Helen Thayer was the first woman and oldest person to make a solo journey to the magnetic North Pole. She competed internationally as a world-class discus thrower, and in 1975 became the U.S. National...
The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were designed to demonstrate the superiority of German athletes, or in the words of the nation's chief propagandist, the Aryan "master race." The Nazi sports apparatus...
The year 1978 saw an unprecedented Washington primary campaign, one that pitted powerful pro-business incumbent State Senator August Mardesich against retired firefighter and pro-union newcomer Larry ...